Å skildre det ubeskrivelege

Akkurat nå er eg nesten ferdig med å lese The Blindfold av Siri Hustvedt. I første delen av boka skal hovudpersonen Iris beskrive ein bomullsdott:

That night I worked for hours on the description. I held the cotton ball with a pair of tweezers up to the light, trying to find words that would express it, but the thing was lost to language; it resisted it even more that the glove. And when i tried metaphors, the object sank so completely into the other thing that I abandoned making comparisons. What was this piece of waste? As i sat sniffing the fibers and poking at the brown stain with a needle, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust. The cotton ball tld me nothing. It was a blank, a cipher; it probably had no connection to anything terrible, an yet I felt as if I had intruded on a shameful secret, that I had seen what I should not have seen. (s.25).

Eg trur dette er den beste skildinga av det ubeskrivelege eg har lese nokon gong. Opplevinga av at språket kjem til kort og at orda ikkje strekk til, er så godt skildra i denne enkle hendinga.

Det er ganske enkelt godt skrive.